There’s a brand new book not even on the shelves yet entitled, “Sleeping In Bum Land,” that tests the courage of one young man’s quest for survival on the streets of Los Angeles for a whole year. Often times it is imagined from the back of one’s mind what a life in the gutter would be like, in this case, I submitted to the raw eyed perspective of life as a tramp, showerless, penniless, at times naive and fraught with a new culture whose daily life stays between the sand and the ocean.
Such a book was created in the form of a journal, un planned-all real, unveiling the whole process of dropping out of society to write in California that many have vowed to discover, yet from my pen I expressed absolute truth on the page, splattered with weather. So how did I decide to write such a book, well I just got my ticket to L.A. to be on a magazine crew, during this month of drudgery and competition; I had suddenly been ditched on the side of the road. The writing in my journal captures the sudden outburst of the senses underlined by vampires, the city streets, homelessness, and instinct.
Take the lawless style of Burroughs; or Kerouac, make a potent blend that ferments and ages and you will then come up with a name for such a style in Blood Homeless. I end up meeting a vampire when scrambling around for a cheap hostel with nothing but a sack on my back and at my most vulnerable state he takes me with a deal that we will be business partners. Our endeavors lead us to important places where I meet a series of characters like Lukaword, Jean Grinaire, and Ulysses, The Go-Go Dancer, Gus, Whisky Dan; that I learn from how to live on the streets. My most memorable spot it sleeping in a gutted out cabinet that once served upon a dolly but now provides shelter out of the rain. The beach is where my moments consist of overall, from the picturesque sunsets, to the surreal theatrical scene that is the boardwalk, and the culture of the beach bums and “hillies.”
During such first rare moments on the street I capture an exciting freedom that goes along with just landing on your own in the raw. The climax comes when I fall in love with Violette and live half my life in a VW van in many street parking nights all over Venice, with a dream of traveling up north together. Inevitable I learn the hard way about the down to life true grit of what surrendering your possessions and sanity to endure long distance homelessness means, in this getting hit by a car and punched in the face, and tossed down to the challenging gutter that seems to impossible to rise up from. This is Blood Homelessness, no walk in the park, yet a nice fuck to the senses, and joy ride through the poetic, ultimately such a book could kill someone to write and it nearly did. “Gorgeous women seem to always be naked around the corner from a feast where royal sand castle men have their way with her, rubbing a light meat marinade on her tits. How amusing it is as a bum to fart in a cozy room of food, and belch as a beast.”
-Sleeping In Bum Land, Chapter 16 Hostel Sister visit
Sleeping in Bum Land - New Novel of Survival
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